I wanted to raise awareness of coastal erosion and the loss of land. My installation The Sea People (2021) took the form of ‘abandoned people’ on an Essex beach and was moulded from the clay and detritus I found there. Organic elements and their place are absorbed into my installations, paintings and sculptures. The natural world is more than an inspiration for my work. The apples are replicas of a cast I made from an apple taken from the tree in 2016 and the installation will be on display for the first time at Apple Day in the Botanic Garden on 22 October.

I've used the new ink to create an apple installation consisting of 68 apples, to mark the age of the tree before it was blown down. I thought I’d end up with black but it’s a dark golden yellow. I soaked the bark for a day and a half and then boiled it to release the tannin. I spotted the wood had been stored and asked to make ink from the bark. The tree was sadly blown down in the Garden during Storm Eunice in 2022. The tree was grafted from the original apple tree in a Lincolnshire garden that is said to have inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, published in Newton’s own first copy of Principia held in Cambridge University Library. Making the first ink from Newton’s Apple Tree was a special moment. I use a tested framework to prepare the colourants and when I’m ‘cooking’ I wear safety equipment in case I’m working with a poisonous part of a plant. My practice is always undertaken with deep respect for the material. Even cat litter can give you a grey white and egg shells a pink white. I’ve had a few brilliant successes and a few duds! Colour can come from unexpected places. I’ll use the berries to make dyes that are yellow and green, with the ripe husks making blues and I should get a deep black from the bark. L) has green berries but soon they’ll be a dark purple. At this time of year, the Buckthorn ( Rhamnus cathartica. The seasonality of natural colour is fascinating. There are some 8,000 plant species in the Garden, so where do I start? With a map of the Garden and a bunch of medieval recipes! I’ve made a beautiful red and purple dye from a 15th-century-old German and Venetian Latin ink recipe using the common poppy, and I’ve discovered that the Jade Vine growing in the Glasshouse can be turned into pink and green paint. I’ll be sharing the results with visitors, researchers and artists through events, performances and a colour database linked to the Garden’s Living Collections Portal. I'll be discovering new colourants made from plants for my project ‘DYE – nature, myth and climate’. I'm Artist-in-Residence at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and over the next 14 months I’ll be exploring the Garden in a way that’s never been done. Nabil Ali is discovering the natural colours hidden within the berries, blooms and bark found in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden – including from a very special tree.

Apple newton works on ac power only